<p>I'll have to second your daughter's views on GS students. They are not "cookie cutter" like many of the CC and SEAS students seem to be, and as nontraditionals, they have some of the most engaging back stories of any students I encountered at Columbia. Not only that, but as a rule, they seem to do just as well in the job and graduate school markets as students from the other undergraduate divisions.</p>
<p>Going back to the rankings, though, I'll finish by reiterating the point that they are produced for mass consumption, but at the same time, those who look most closely at them are not representative of the vast majority of the college-bound population. I believe that it is still the case that most of the nation's high school graduates look no further than the cheap in-state tuition or full ride at a local college or state flagship school, and the rest of us are left to debate endlesslessly and circuitously the minutiae of an imperfect system.</p>
<p>I am a big critic of the USNWR college rankings and the people that slavishly use them. I understand the limitations of a ranking system and the perils of following one and the ability of colleges to manipulate data purely for ranking purposes.</p>
<p>However... I have to admit - and I invite others to confess as well, that I run to the rankings website to check the rankings of the schools that my son has been accepted to.. just for the heck of it, and not to enter into our decision making process of course!!! LOL</p>
<p>
[quote]
Columbia's handling of the rankings is completely unethical, in my view.
[/quote]
I don't think so -- I think it is the US News methodology that is flawed, and encourages colleges to do whatever they can to influence the figures in their favor. Columbia is simply reporting the best set of numbers it can. If US News took a wider view -- such as considering the overall strength of various departments and offerings at larger universities, and looking at the resources actually available to students -- then Columbia would do very well in any case. </p>
<p>That being said, I'm not at all sure that my daughter is getting better academics she would at Berkeley -- my guess is that the course content, qualifications of faculty, and range of offerings is about the same. Obviously my d. chose Barnard, for more money, than Cal -- but my d. made her choice based largely on location. </p>
<p>I think it's ridiculous to think that we can come up with any sort of valid ordered ranking of colleges in any case -- there are far too many variables to content with -- but as a parent the factors that I would consider most important are quality of academics coupled with quality of life. (Will my kid get a good education there? Will my kid be safe and happy there?)</p>
<p>
[quote]
However... I have to admit - and I invite others to confess as well, that I run to the rankings website to check the rankings of the schools that my son has been accepted to.. just for the heck of it, and not to enter into our decision making process of course!!! LOL
<p>I'm not sure if I can follow the debate about USNews and Columbia. While Columbia DOES make preliminary announcements that may not always include the SEAS, US News does use the combination of CC and SEAS. An annoucement such as "The overall admit rate for Columbia College was 9.7%" does not end up influencing USNews.</p>
<p>FACTS 2006: Undergraduate Admissions</p>
<p>Columbia College, Entering Fall Class 2005
Applications 15,793
Admitted Students 1,693
Admit Rate 11% </p>
<p>School of Engineering and Applied Science,Entering Fall Class 2005
Applications 2,332
Admitted Students 625
Admit 27% </p>
<p>USNEWS 2007
Total applicants: 18,119
Total acceptances: 2,318
Selectivity: Most Selective
Overall acceptance rate:13% </p>
<p>Since Columbia only offers undergraduate education through Columbia College, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of General Studies, I don't see how it could be expected to report the statistics of institutions that are solely affiliated, namely Barnard and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Is this discussion really about the ... School of General Studies?</p>
<p>Ranked lists are everywhere. There are list for best movies of the year, worst movies of the year, best national park, best place to retire, most healthy city, most obsessed city and everything under the sun. They are there because there is a market for it, people read them out of curiosity. If you don't like them, just don't read them.</p>
<p>Then there are USNWR college list, and the various college football ranking list. People cry foul when their team does not rank as high as they like, then they want to boycott it.</p>
<p>US news is a ranking based on endowment size. They group colleges in groups of around 5 based on endowment, and then use their formula in that subgroup.
You notice this when you see Yeshiva ranked in the 40s. It is a horrible school, but has a +1,000,000,000 endowment so they rank it high.</p>
<p>At the risk of stepping into the crossfire, if i understand what Columbia is doing it seems ok. The data for Columbia College and Barnard are both available so students who are trying to assess chances of admissions can do so. Students who are trying to get a sense of the level of the classmates can do so by combining the data on their own. Am really missing the boat on this issue?</p>
<p>
[quote]
But to me one big value of the [USNWR] data is giving a quick fix on ... the academic quality of the other students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I find USNWR rankings in this regard to be nonsense. Example: For the past 35 years Reed College graduates have been third or fourth (depending on the years counted) of all schools in the US in the academic student quality of future PhD earners. Reed's ranking? 53rd of LACs, without considering the universities. You won't get any hint of the academic quality of Reed students from the USNWR ranking.</p>
<p>Vossron, what is the percentage of students who applied to Reed AND went to earn a PhD? And for that matter, how MANY PhD were there in the past .. 10 years.</p>
<p>The insistence of repeating such an EXTREMELY small statistics of the education world is similar to measuring high schools by only following the top 2-3% of the garduating class, all the while completely ignoring the droupout and graduation rates.</p>
<p>Fwiw, if the NUMBER of PhD production and undergraduate degree were relevant in this debate, our high school graduates would be better off studying a yet to be offered INTERNATIONAL USNews and considering moving overseas. </p>
<p>For the nth time. Reed is Reed. The school has stated many times that they do not care about the rankings. Why can't the Reed fans not accept that the ranking should not be relevant to them, and accept that their school is correctly ranked according to USNews criteria. </p>
<p>Again, if USNews had some common sense, Reed would be listed just above SLC in an alphabetized listing. However, is THAT what those two school want? Suuuuuure!</p>
<p>"National universities with multiple undergraduate schools should be required to submit numbers for all of them."</p>
<p>I agree. What counts is what the stats are for the particular college you, as an applicant, are particularly applying to. Of course, where university resources are allocated across different colleges this has to be accounted for rationally in some fashion. But a merged, conglomerate selectivity stat, which is applicable to none of the university's individual colleges, is of no real use to any applicant.</p>
<p>"It seems that the fact that Barnard is compared to its peers in the LAC category costs it a good number of points, because the rankings are a lot less forgiving when it comes to faculty resources, ..."</p>
<p>I believe the primary issue is that US News does not give weight to the additional resources available to the Barnard community by virtue of its affiliation agreeement with Columbia. Above and beyond what Barnard directly provides on its own, it also provides the resources of Columbia by virtue of the affiliation agreement. These additional resources are substantial, and are far in excess of what is available to students at virtually all other LACs.</p>
<p>When both student bodies can, contractually, freely take courses at each others campus across the street, and do so ubiquitously, it seems to me that, from the perspective of a prospective student, Barnard faculty resources= Columbia faculty resources to a large extent. Barnard students are not confined/limited only to the resources directly provided by Barnard.</p>
<p>"The data for Columbia College and Barnard are both available so students who are trying to assess chances of admissions can do so. Students who are trying to get a sense of the level of the classmates can do so by combining the data on their own. Am really missing the boat on this issue?"</p>
<p>That's fine by me, and completely appropriate as far as the selectivity column goes. But that's only one column in their overall ranking scheme. The other columns involve resources that are evaluated as separate, when in fact they are pooled through the mechanism of the affiliation agreement. Students at both institutions get the resources of both institutions to a large extent.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I believe the primary issue is that US News does not give weight to the additional resources available to the Barnard community by virtue of its affiliation agreeement with Columbia. Above and beyond what Barnard directly provides on its own, it also provides the resources of Columbia by virtue of the affiliation agreement. These additional resources are substantial, and are far in excess of what is available to students at virtually all other LACs.</p>
<p>When both student bodies can, contractually, freely take courses at each others campus across the street, and do so ubiquitously, it seems to me that, from the perspective of a prospective student, Barnard faculty resources= Columbia faculty resources to a large extent. Barnard students are not confined/limited only to the resources directly provided by Barnard.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think it works THAT way. USNews is not oblivious to the Columbia resources available to Barnard students; it does measure the resources directly available to UNDERGRADUATES and then compares them to thr school's peers. Further, adding the resources of two colleges does not necessarily make the resources better per capita. </p>
<p>Looking at the methodology may help understand why this particular element is more "competitive" in the LAC ranking than in the national universities'. Specifically, check how "access to faculty" and "class size" might impact a final ranking in this category. This is also why you can't transfer numbers from one list to the other.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Faculty resources (20 percent). Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2005-06 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). </p>
<p>In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).
<p>"the academic student quality of future PhD earners"</p>
<p>Sorry, it was late when I wrote that, and it is poorly worded.</p>
<p>I should have written "that particular measure of academic student quality, the percentage of future PhD earners."</p>
<p>We can measure undergraduate preparation for academics, medicine, law, etc. Future PhD numbers are available as a measure of academics; it's one of few such objective measures available. The problem is that the USNWR rankings are not designed to reflect any particular feature primarily, but are an agglomeration of various measures. Thus, undergraduate schools at the highest levels of academics don't stand out. If you think the academic achievement of earning PhDs reflects the academic quality of students, you will may want to consider this data, as you may if you think the quality of undergraduate instruction has an influence on later academic achievement.</p>
<p>Again for the past 35 years, these schools have consistently been in the top 11 of producing the specific academic quality of future PhD earners; their current USNWR rank (LAC and U) follows. Sometimes the rank reflects it, sometimes not. This shows nothing more than than the problem of trying to discern academic excellence from the ranking.</p>
<p>CalTech 4
Harvey Mudd 14
Reed 53
Swarthmore 3
MIT 4
Carleton 6
U Chicago 9
Oberlin 22
Bryn Mawr 20
Pomona 7
Grinnell 14</p>
<p>Even given what US News does look at, all these items you cited should include columbia faculty as well:</p>
<p>"Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent)."</p>
<p>Your prior comments suggest this data already includes Columbia. I doubt it.</p>
<p>More importantly, as others have mentioned there seem to be important criteria absent that are in fact quite important.</p>
<p>For example, for liberal arts colleges particularly, breadth and depth of course offerings available to students in toto are quite important. A department of a small college may have only a few professors; Offerings at the upper levels in some departments may be quite limited. Or completely absent. Most liberal arts colleges are constrained to the offerings they can directly provide through their own resources, but Barnard has effectively no such limitation. This is a critical distinction, yet as far as I know unevaluated.</p>
<p>The regionally adjusted faculty salary measure is supposed to indicate quality of faculty, or likelihood of attracting quality faculty. There are other factors that go into this though, all unevaluated: location desirability, size of local professional network, job opportunities for spouses. All which favor Barnard. Someplace else in US News they have a direct "academic reputation" poll, and this should include Columbia as well as Barnard since, a Barnard student can take a preponderance of courses at Columbia, taught by Columbia professors, if she wants to. But it doesn't.</p>